


The Monster And The Man. Or: Why is Dan’s emotional catharsis less sympathetic than Lucifer’s?

by CJ_R



Series: Essays [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 18:59:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19707481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CJ_R/pseuds/CJ_R
Summary: An essay about Dan's struggle against his own inner monster. Now expanded with new material!





	The Monster And The Man. Or: Why is Dan’s emotional catharsis less sympathetic than Lucifer’s?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This essay originally appeared on my Tumblr page and I've cross posted it here to AO3 for archival purposes as well as organizational. Unlike earlier essays, this one has undergone a slight expansion to include points that came up in the comment section that I felt were relevant to my argument; specifically "Ella" as well as most of the conclusion. There have also been other minor edits for clarity throughout the rest of the text. Please enjoy!

If there’s one character that people seem to be angrier at than Chloe Decker, it’s Dan Espinoza. Chloe came much closer to crossing an unforgivable line in Season 4 than I think many of us expected. Dan, on the other hand, walked up to the line, stepped over it, tried to step back behind it before deciding to light the whole bloody thing on fire.

So, if you’re a fan who’s pissed at Dan, you’re far from alone. The fact of the matter is that Dan Espinoza is _the_ most unlikeable principal character on the show and the hardest to sympathize with. He serves as a foil for Chloe and as a mirror for Lucifer. It’s not an accident that Dan is at his most sympathetic in Season 3, when Lucifer is re-integrating the angelic facets of his identity and is his absolute worst self in Season 4, as Lucifer is coming to terms with his own self-hatred. 

As much as we may hate to give Marcus Pierce credit for anything, the man was an astute judge of character. He had Dan pegged from the moment he met him and it’s an identity Dan alternately embraces and rejects. He is a corrupt cop.

The show’s take on corruption within the LAPD is a subject worthy of it’s own essay, so for now I’m going to focus on Dan and Lucifer’s mirrored stories within 4x07′s “Devil Is As Devil Does”.

**Where We Start**

In Season 4, both Lucifer and Dan are drowning in the same two emotions - grief and self-hatred. How that manifests, however, is very different. Lucifer turns his emotions on himself. Dan turns them outward, looking for a target and Lucifer makes a very easy and convenient target to punish for Charlotte’s death.  It is extremely believable and rooted in all of Dan’s past character development as well as some very realistic psychology. Not everyone wants to be comforted in grief and sometimes it brings out the very worst in us, manifesting as anger and scapegoating.

In a different essay, I pointed out that at no point is Lucifer interested in punishing Chloe for her betrayal - what he wants is her acceptance. The same thing is happening with Dan. Lucifer doesn’t default to calling him “Detective Douche” as his go-to nickname. In the majority of scenes, Lucifer refers to him as “Daniel,” even as he outwardly pushes back against Dan’s blame. Allowing Dan to punish him, within certain boundaries, is the only form of care that his friend will accept from Lucifer.

Lucifer also understands instinctively what Dan is doing. He’s punishing himself. Even in 4x07, as Dan and Lucifer are both hitting rock bottom, when Eve suggests that they punish him Lucifer responds, “His existence is punishment enough.” It’s a cold, cutting statement, befitting how Dan treated him in the wake of Officer Joan’s death, but even Lucifer at his worst puts Dan off-limits.

Dan, unfortunately, does not return the favor.

Both Dan and Lucifer are struggling with the same issue - an innocent officer is dead because they trusted mortal law _._ Lucifer, however, is in a greater position of power than Dan; he is the Devil. He has the power to punish Julian and driven by grief and rage and pain, with Eve whispering encouragement in his ear, he does just that.

Dan is also in a position of power, but it’s a position of human power and it’s a position he know how to use - and how to abuse. The entirety of Dan’s arc in Season 1 is watching his corrupt choices spiral out of control until multiple people are dead. Season 2, he has a man killed when the justice system sets a guilty man free. Season 3, he’s trying to do better, but once Charlotte is killed he actively embraces the identity of the corrupt cop when facing Pierce’s henchman.

4x07, we see Dan return to an old trick - use someone else to do the dirty work while attempting to keep his hands clean. It’s important to note that Dan doesn’t actually have a problem with Julian’s fate. In fact, he’s gleeful when he leans into his face and taunts him with “cop killer” and how he’s going to suffer in jail. It isn’t until he puts the pieces together and realizes that Lucifer has done this that he’s able to justify putting a target on Lucifer’s back. Worse, Lucifer has succeeded in delivering Julian to the police to be tried and jailed.

So, Dan pulls out his detective skills - and it’s a good reminder that Dan, for all his flaws, is a formidable detective when motivated. He manages to find Lucifer’s cigarette in the trash, which is circumstantial, but enough justification for his desire. He wants Lucifer punished, to feel every bit of pain that Dan is currently feeling. So he whispers Lucifer’s name in Jacob Tiernan’s ear and waits to see the chaos unfold.

**Hubris**

Dan’s hubris is that he has completely underestimated what kind of man Jacob Tiernan is. Even before they realize that Trixie is in danger you can see Dan begin to panic. For all that he wants Lucifer punished, he doesn’t want Lucifer _dead_. It’s a bit of a truism that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. Dan is angry at Lucifer _because_ he cares and because he thinks of Lucifer as a safe target to vent his anger at because of their past friendship. This moment is when his self-protective bubble of anger pops. Dan has put Lucifer in mortal danger and even though Dan knows full well that Lucifer can take care of himself (and has seen evidence of it), Lucifer isn’t bulletproof as far as he knows.

And then Chloe realizes that Trixie has snuck out of the house to see Lucifer and Dan’s entire world threatens to shatter. In one fell swoop not only is his daughter’s life in danger, along with Lucifer’s, but Chloe’s respect for him is on the line as well if she finds out. Then there’s the cherry on top, his career. The monster hiding in Dan’s psyche is the corrupt cop and it’s a monster _he doesn’t want to be_.

Dan’s hits rock bottom the moment he bursts out of that elevator to find Lucifer having subdued Tiernan’s henchmen and Trixie safe on the balcony. Dan is shamed - not only did he put his daughter’s life in jeopardy but the very man he wanted to punish is the one who was ultimately able to protect her. 

Lucifer hasn’t quite hit his yet (that’ll come when he sees his wings) but he’s been knocked away from the same edge that Dan’s been on the entire season, and twice - first when Chloe confronts him with what he already knows - what he did was wrong and he knows it, even if he’s not willing to admit it. The image of Chloe disappointed in him with tears streaming down her face, is enough to have Lucifer stalling and it’s something that Eve points out.

The second time is when Trixie - one of the few truly innocent characters on the show - bounces into his penthouse and demonstrates her complete faith in Lucifer in a season when even Chloe is struggling with reconciling the good man she knows and the Devil who is capable of dealing out punishment with cruel sense of irony. 

Dan putting Trixie’s life in danger gives Lucifer a second chance. He failed to protect Officer Joan. But when it truly matters, when Trixie’s life is on the line, Lucifer _does not fail_. Dan bursts in to Lucifer’s triumph in the face of his own failure. Only now he doesn’t have the shield of his anger to hide behind anymore. He’s lost, confused and in pain. He’s waiting to be punished. The moment when Tiernan’s thug tells Chloe that Tiernan found out that Lucifer broke Julian’s back is drawn out, letting the audience _feel_ Dan’s agony, caught between terror and relief at being caught. 

And then he gets away with it. Scot-free, as far as Dan knows. (For now. God bless Ella Lopez). All’s well that ends well, right? After all, Trixie is fine, Lucifer is fine.

**Power And Responsibility**

Not quite. Dan now has to figure out how he’s going to reconcile the man and the monster. He may not have a pair of devil wings to show him how far he’s fallen, but he doesn’t need them. All he has to do is look at his daughter’s face and know that she’s still breathing because the man he was angry enough to punish was the one to protect her, not him. Neither the corrupt cop nor the Devil are an instrument of justice, a realization that both Dan and Lucifer have come to by the end of the episode. 

It’s easy to be flip and simply say that Lucifer engenders more sympathy than Dan because Lucifer hasn’t spent the entirety of Season 4 up to this point being a jerk, but that isn’t entirely true. Lucifer’s pain is very much a consequence of his own choices. He chose to lead a rebellion against his Father. He spent millennia “sowing destruction and chaos for his own amusement” (thank you Amenadiel). Those seeds grew into the stories that shook Chloe’s faith in him. It doesn’t excuse her choices, but it puts them into a context that is perfectly understandable. Lucifer is the Devil, a supernatural being widely seen as second only to God in sheer power.

That makes Lucifer a much more powerful character than Dan Espinoza, corrupt cop. As out of line as Lucifer is in this episode, he does not abuse his power to the extent that Dan does. He could have killed Julian, completely circumventing human law and sending him straight into Lucifer’s territory, to do with as he pleases. What Lucifer does to Julian is horrific enough, but he’s still delivered to the police, able to be tried for both human trafficking and Officer Joan’s murder. And, when confronted with the consequences of that choice, Lucifer makes a different choice with Jacob Tiernan. He recognizes that the punishment Tiernan deserves is within the realm of human law, not celestial justice. And he _acknowledges_ that he was wrong directly to Chloe.

Dan’s power is much more limited and when he abuses it he does so almost to his fullest extent. It’s not an accident that the next episode deals with police brutality and Dan is faced with having to tell Amenadiel that, despite putting in a complaint, the officers that nearly shot an unarmed black kid won’t face any consequences. Just as Dan isn’t facing any consequences for his own actions. Moreover, Dan isn’t confessing what he did to anyone, _even when he has the opportunity to_ in the very next scene with Ella pulling him aside to tell him that she knows there was a cop involved in the Tiernan case.

Contrast this with Lucifer who within the first twenty minutes of 4x07 tells Chloe the truth - and Chloe’s response illustrates the power difference very starkly. “What am I supposed to do with this?” Lucifer is the Devil. He doesn’t have to follow human law if he doesn’t want to. Chloe literally has no way to hold him to account except to confront him with his own conscience and hope that she gets through to him.

The _pettiness_ of Dan’s actions and the limits of his power are one of the things that help throw Dan into a much more unsympathetic light than Lucifer. It’s easier for us to parse a corrupt cop backsliding than it is to watch the Devil himself do the same. Unlike Lucifer, Dan _could_ be held to account. He’s gotten multiple people killed. He’s put others in danger and it’s a choice that he keeps making over and over again. 

In a just world, Dan Espinoza would have been drummed out of the LAPD at the end of Season 1. He ought to be in jail himself and he knows it. We have seen his perspective and we understand and sympathize with each step he took to get here, but all the good intentions in the world do not justify Dan’s actions.

But this isn’t a just world and Dan is protected first by luck and later by Ella, who prioritizes mercy over punishment. 

**Ella**

Ella is the other major reason that Dan’s catharsis rubs me the wrong way at times. Because where Lucifer demonstrates how much he’s learned and grown since Season 1, Dan falls right back into old habits, not only in indulging in seeking punishment outside the bounds of the law he’s sworn to uphold, but also in how he attempts to cover it up.

Presumably Ella is unaware that this is an established pattern of behavior for Dan. She joined the LAPD in Season 2, post Palmetto. She may or may not have heard about why Dan was demoted but we know she is unaware of Dan giving up Warden Perry to the Russian mob. Still, she knows enough. She has proof, as of 4x09 that Dan is a dirty cop.  Dan not only put Trixie in danger, he put Lucifer and Eve in danger. The fact that he never meant to put Lucifer’s _life_ at risk is irrelevant - from Ella’s POV, the fact is that Dan almost got another one of her best friends killed. 

Worse, he lied to her. More than once.

He attempted to distract Ella with a kiss when confronted with evidence, even after they’ve already agreed that the hook up was a mistake. He tried to convince her that what she knew wasn’t actually the case. In essence, he tried to gaslight her in the exact same manner he did to Chloe. The fact that Ella didn’t turn Dan in when she finds out the truth disturbs me because it’s repeating the pattern of the various women in Dan’s life forgiving his active attempts to deceive them. Lucifer also forgives Dan's extremely poor treatment of him. It’s perfectly rooted in their characters, but it does mean that Dan escapes the consequences of his actions this season.

But for Ella, Dan’s pain and need for help are more important to her than what _almost_ happened in Lucifer’s penthouse. She’s somewhat of an audience surrogate in how she helps bring Dan’s storyline to a close this season. She is sympathizing with her friend’s pain, not acknowledging the pain his actions have nearly caused.. It’s this emotional journey out of grief that intertwines with Ella’s crisis of faith and that is what’s brought to a conclusion when he finally takes Ella’s advice to get help.

**Coping with Pain vs. Taking Responsibility**

Because this is a show about redemption, we feel a certain amount of relief as Dan begins to get the help he needs to move on after Charlotte’s murder. But true redemption doesn’t just require an acknowledgment that your actions were wrong. It also requires restitution. And Dan has not offered that since the ending of Season 1, when he turned himself in to clear Lucifer’s name. Season 4 made it clear that Dan still hasn’t learned his lesson, even if he’s more self-aware of his flaws than when we were introduced to him.

And, especially in today’s climate, a cop who abuses their power is very difficult for some people to sympathize with at all, given the amount of destruction they can wreak without any Devil face whatsoever.

Coping with pain is not the same thing as taking responsibility for your choices. Dan’s storyline feels only half finished to me. He needs to to have the consequences of his actions come back to him and really _lose_ something important to him. Palmetto cost him his seniority on the force and was the final nail in the coffin of his marriage with Chloe. 

One opinion would be that what Dan needs to lose next season is his life. Death in the service of who he actually _wants_ to be is the only way for his character to atone. Another would be for Dan to live so that he has to actually have to deal with the consequences of his actions in the hopes that he finally manages to wrestle with his own tendency to choose the easy solution over the moral choice and find his redemption in life rather than death.

Either way, Dan needs to actually face his own monster and confront it head on. 


End file.
